White House Mining Tax Scrapped, Bukele Hires Bitcoin Expert

Markets finally began to grow a little this week after four weeks of stagnation. There wasn’t a whole lot of news to drive prices either way. In the U.S., regulators continued to hold the line on their assertion that existing rules are sufficient for the industry. Meanwhile, another domestic crypto exchange—Gemini—continued expanding offshore.

The most politically important tweet from Crypto Twitter this week came from Congressman Warren Davidson, who confirmed on Monday that the new U.S. debt ceiling agreement blocked an unpopular White House proposal for a 30% excise tax to be applied to crypto mining firms based on how much electricity they consume. 

Also that day, Bitcoin NFT project Ordinals hit a new milestone. 

On Tuesday, El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office—an official institution set up to promulgate Bitcoin as legal tender in the country—announced that the country’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele had hired a new Bitcoin consultant. 

Alex Svanevik, the CEO of blockchain data and research company Nansen, announced that the company was letting go of 30% of its staff in order to streamline the company. He also mentioned the bear market as a factor.

Blockchain gumshoe ZachXBT exposed a particularly callous scam on Thursday.

Imagine earning a million in twenty-four hours for doing nothing except opening your wallet. Well, it has already happened. Welcome to the blockchain. 

It’s easy to get worried about AI these days with so many tech industry leaders labeling it a potential extinction threat. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered a more mundane prediction about the advent of artificial general intelligence: maybe things will keep on keeping on. 

NFT theft is declining but the Blur marketplace is becoming popular for stolen digital goods, according to PeckShieldAlert.

Messari analyst Ally Zach on Thursday did a deep dive on Solana’s newest users and how the blockchain caters to consumer applications. 

Finally, crypto wallet provider Atomic on Saturday warned that several wallets have been compromised. Crypto sleuth ZachXBT revealed the eye-watering amounts of crypto at stake.